The man who is all aglow with love to Jesus finds little need for amusement. He has no time for trifling. He is in dead earnest to save souls, and establish the truth, and enlarge the kingdom of his Lord.
Whirled from off our feet by a revival, carried aloft by popularity, exalted by success in soul-winning, we should be as the chaff which the wind driveth away, were it not that the gracious discipline of mercy breaks the ships of our vainglory with a strong east wind, and casts us shipwrecked, naked and forlorn, upon the Rock of Ages.
Topics: Evangelism, Discipline Source: The Minister's Fainting Fits, Lectures to My Students, Lecture XI, 1856.
We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right mayhap our children and our children's children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word.
Hang this question up in your homes - "What would Jesus do?" and then think of another - "How would Jesus do it?" For what Jesus would do, and how He would do it, may always stand as the best guide to us.
My brethren, let me say, be like Christ at all times. Imitate him in "public." Most of us live in some sort of public capacity--many of us are called to work before our fellow-men every day. We are watched; our words are caught; our lives are examined--taken to pieces.
"But," say others, "God has elected them on the foresight of their faith." Now, God gives faith, therefore He could not have elected them on account of faith which He foresaw.
A faith which works not for purification will work for putrefaction. Unless our faith makes us pine after holiness, it is no better than the faith of devils, and perhaps it is not even so good as that. A holy man is the workmanship of the Holy Spirit.
Faith and works are bound up in the same bundle. He that obeys God trusts God; and he that trusts God obeys God. He that is without faith is without works; and he that is without works is without faith.
The man who is all aglow with love to Jesus finds little need for amusement. He has no time for trifling. He is in dead earnest to save souls, and establish the truth, and enlarge the kingdom of his Lord.